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26 February 2016
Resurrected post: Earth science-y catchphrases
My father and I share a habit: we tend to point out and grumble over certain catchphrases we hear or read in a news report, mostly because they’re misused, overused, or just plain don’t make sense. He dislikes things such as “address the issue” or “touch base” or “spearhead”. Me? I make faces when I hear Earth science terms getting co-opted.
18 April 2012
Mineralogy Etymology
It seems like everyone enjoyed the post on the etymology of volcanology vocab, and I did mention something about mineralogy, so…here it is! I’ve mostly pulled up minerals that I deal with in volcanology. (This is just a quick collection – hopefully I’ll get around to posting more once I’m done with my latest round of grad school craziness. Oh, committee meetings…)
10 April 2012
Volcanology Etymology
In my liberal-arts-undergraduate life, I ended up taking a few linguistics classes to fulfill the requirements for my anthropology minor. I actually had a lot of fun, especially when we started talking about the etymology of words in modern English (otherwise known as, ‘stolen from everyone else’). Working out the component parts of a word is one of my favorite tricks for learning new vocab (I also play this game when I’m trying to deal with other languages, especially ones with a Latin base. It really works!) So this weekend I started thinking about the specialized vocabulary that geologists use.
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.